It is well known to employ ultrasonic surgical devices for performing surgical procedures. Generally speaking, those surgical devices are hand-held instruments connected to a source of ultrasonic energy. The ultrasonic energy is transmitted through a connection or mount between the ultrasonic energy source and a hand-held coupler which mounts the surgical tool, for example a surgical blade mounted at the tip of the coupler. This facilitates transmission of ultrasonic energy from the ultrasonic energy source through the coupler to the surgical blade to generate ultrasonic vibrations in the blade.
In the past, cutting edges have been fabricated from stainless steel since stainless steel can be sharpened and honed to a fine edge. However, the use of stainless steel blades in ultrasonic applications has certain associated problems. In particular, stainless steel absorbs ultrasonic energy, so that additional energy has to be supplied to the blade to obtain the desired displacement. The supply of this additional energy results in heat generation which is wasteful of energy and undesirable in surgical applications.